Industry support for Armitage's inquiry
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THE ROAD haulage industry has given its wholehearted support to the announcement of the composition of the independent inquiry into lorries — including the question of maximum weights.
Transport Minister Norman Fowler last week announced that Sir Arthur Armitage will be the man to undertake the inquiry and the subsequent report. Sir Arthur, aged 62, is Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Common Law at the University of Manchester. In 1964 he chaired the Committee on the Pay of Postmen and to date has no known transport experience.
Although Sir Arthur will not have a committee to help him, he will "be assisted in his consideration of the evidence by impartial assessors who will be experts in the professional and technical subjects most relevant to the inquiry."
These assessors, thought to be four, are currently being chosen and Mr Fowler will be announcing their names shortly.
In an answer in the Commons during May, Mr Fowler said the inquiry would "face squarely" the issue of lorry weights. Other subjects to be examined include the "causes and consequences of the growth in the movement of freight by road and to report on how best to ensure that future development serves the public interest."
It is expected that the inquiry will start work in September and interested organisations will be able to submit evidence and views.
Two of the first organisations that will be eager to submit evidence are the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association.
An FTA spokesman was pleased with the choice of Sir Arthur, although he has no recognised experience in road freight transport. "It is good that he can be seen to be completely independent and not pro-lorry. Otherwise the finished report is open to doubt by the anti-lorry environmentalists." Ideally the FTA would have preferred an inquiry solely into the maximum weights issue, which would have been much "tighter and shorter" in its view.
The RHA expressed much the same opinion and was in favour of a no-committee inquiry. "One man with the help of assessors should be able to finish the work more quickly than a committee."